


An Alchemical Wedding

by misura



Category: FlashForward
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The thing is: all his life, Simon has only ever loved smart people. (Well, smart people and his family.)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Alchemical Wedding

The thing is: all his life, Simon has only ever loved smart people. (Well, smart people and his family.)

The other thing is: there just aren't that many smart people in the world. In fact, for a very long time, Simon feels like there might not be any at all, which seems a tragedy, if also a little bit cool, because it makes him that much more special. (That much more alone.)

Books help, a little. Before he goes to university, he figures that perhaps, it's not that there are no smart people in the world; it's just that they're all dead, or really, really old. (When he's nine, he spends a lost quarter of an hour combing through phonebooks, looking for Einstein.)

After he gets to university, there's Phillip.

 

In hindsight, Simon thinks of it as a crush. A harmless one, at that, barely worth the name. It's not even puppy love, really; his stomach doesn't feel fluttery at the idea of holding Phillip's hand or anything.

They talk - sometimes, at first; often, later. About physics, mostly, because Simon is single-minded and Phillip is indulgent and unmarried and also, Simon is delighted to realize, really very smart.

Smart, in this case, meaning Simon can run his mouth and not be interrupted by any requests for clarification or exclamations of outrage (Simon is very much aware of the box, thank you, and also very much determined not to think inside of it).

Phillip doesn't just listen to him, the way his mom does (and later Annabelle - his brothers make the effort, sometimes, but they just haven't got the attention span to keep up).

Phillip _understands_.

And possibly (again, in hindsight) that should have been a humbling experience, a sign from above that Simon's maybe not as extraordinary smart as he thinks he is, but at the time it happens, Simon is just too busy feeling happy to bother with that sort of stuff.

He's thirteen years old, and for the first time in his life, he feels that he's not alone.

 

At the age of twenty-one, Simon hasn't really changed much from when he was thirteen.

He's still one of the smartest people in the world, still special, still only capable of loving people who are smart (and his family, still. He'll always love his family.)

However, he does discover that in order to enjoy having sex with someone, there's really not that much brain power required on the other end. (Sex isn't physics; it's just biology, stripped to its barest, most banal basics. It's surprisingly fun, though, and not too messy, if you keep your wits about you.)

There are girlfriends - strings of them, because in this particular aspect of his life, Simon judges it safest to stay inside the box. (He knows what it's like to be different. He knows what it's like to be able to blend in, too; it's much more comfortable, much less likely to cause people to make a fuss.)

And then there's Lloyd.

 

Lloyd is terribly stuffy and unreasonably fussy and rather awkward when it comes to people in general.

Above all, Simon comes to discover, he's very British. Not about tea, particularly; Simon never really noticed Lloyd displaying any sort of special preference for the stuff. It's in the accent, a good bit, but it's more than that. It's in the way he blinks at people when they're doing or saying things Lloyd considers 'not done'.

(There are a lot of things Lloyd considers 'not done'. It's a bit embarrassing, really.)

"You're a real stick in the mud, you know that?" Simon says, because he knows a lot about what people want to hear before, during or after you've had sex with them, but when it comes to smart people, he just opts for simple honesty, most of the time. It's easier, and he feels it's the right thing to do.

(In hindsight, he might have been rather naive.)

"And you're a student who is going to write a paper this afternoon," Lloyd says.

"Only need to turn it in tomorrow at nine," Simon says, even though this is not a useful thing to say, because Lloyd is aware of this information. It simply doesn't mean the same thing to him (and that is extraordinary, really, because the very basis of all good science is that if you give two people the same set of data and the same question to answer, they'll come up with identical conclusions.)

(This, too, is rather naive in hindsight.)

"Nine in the morning," Lloyd says.

"Still gives me twenty hours to get it done."

"More like nineteen hours and twenty-six minutes," Lloyd says, looking at his watch. "This afternoon, Simon. You're not pulling another all-nighter for this one."

"You're not my mum," Simon says, because stating the known is contagious.

"Thank God I'm not," Lloyd says.

"Oh, I do," Simon says. "I will. Next time He and I sit down for a chat, won't I?"

Lloyd smiles, unwillingly (Simon can tell. He's good at that, at making people do things they don't really want to, on some level. He'd like to think it doesn't make him a bad person.)

"All right then. I'll leave you to it."

 

Simon doesn't know when he goes from mildly disliking Lloyd to loving him. It sneaks up on him, this change - he sees it coming, in some ways, because he's smart enough to realize that Lloyd is, too, but until he sits down and listens to Lloyd talk about quantum physics, he figures he can still get out of the way in time.

It's a pretty well-attended lecture, and Simon is in the back. Out of sight, he hopes. Able to slip out when he gets bored.

And then Lloyd starts talking, and it's not like some sort of revelation, like he's talking only to Simon, like the rest of the audience isn't there. It's a lecture, everything in it watered down to make it more accessible, easier to understand for people who aren't Simon.

It's pretty boring, really. Simon stays until the end, against his better judgment, until it's just him and Lloyd and an empty lecture hall.

"Simon," Lloyd says. "Was there something you didn't understand?"

"Why are you doing this?" Simon asks.

"What?" Lloyd says. "I'm not - I'm not doing anything, Simon."

Technically, entirely untrue. People are always doing _something_. "Exactly," Simon says.

"Excuse me, I don't - I don't follow," Lloyd says.

"Is this what you want to do, the rest of your life?" Simon gets up. "Lecture?"

Lloyd looks slightly bemused. "Well, what's the alternative?"

"We could do something," Simon says. "Together. You and me."

Lloyd blinks once. "Are you coming on to me? Because, really, I'm flattered but - "

"Don't flatter yourself," Simon says. It's difficult, to imagine Lloyd in the throes of passion, but difficult is far from the same as impossible. "I'm talking business here. Applied physics. Think about it."

"Oh," Lloyd says. He might be relieved; it's hard to tell underneath the still rampant cluelessness.

 

Lloyd gets married; Simon creates NLAP.

It is, perhaps, not the most even division of labor, but Simon is more or less all right with that, also because he knows that Lloyd has done his part, too, in the creation of NLAP. It hasn't all been Simon.

They take a picture - just the two of them, wearing hard helmets, in front of a sign.

Simon brings a copy of it home with him.

"It's like a wedding picture," his mother says, and Simon really hopes she's been cutting onions for dinner or something. "We'll put in on the mantelpiece."

"Mum, please," he says.

"No, no, I understand. Sit. We'll have dinner, soon."

Simon sits and eats his dinner and fields questions about NLAP, about money, about food.

He's not sure about the future, about Lloyd, or even about NLAP (although he doesn't mention that, of course) but he knows that no matter what, there's always going to be these people for him to come home to.

For the moment, he figures that's good enough.


End file.
